


Report

by Mohini



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Minor Character Death, Vomiting, field medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 07:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17199185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: He knows her. He will always know her.





	Report

The mission objective is down. The execution was shoddy, the engineer’s protective agent too aware, too fast, and he had to take the shot through the slender body shielding his target. Confirmation of kill is going to require investigation. The body of the escort is collapsed on top of him and there’s no way to be certain without getting closer. Much closer.

He climbs over the edge of the embankment, edging closer with weapon still trained on the escort and his objective. No one’s moving.

Closer still, and he rolls the body off the engineer. A slim face, a familiar curve to the jaw, delicate shoulders lax in unconsciousness. His body reacts before his consciousness can, bile erupting from his lips with barely a second to spin away from the girl on the ground.

_Natalia_.

A lifetime ago, training with a child assassin from the Red Room, teaching her to stalk, to wait, to kill.

His body convulses again, pale fluid rising and arcing away from wide stretched lips. The ground splattered with the liquid nutrition that provides all he needs and nothing he wants.

His Natalia. She looks as she did then, still so young. He suspected then, when her endurance approached his and her abilities surpassed all those around her, that she might have been enhanced. And now, crimson blooming from her abdomen, he has done the thing he feared most for her.

A soft sound, a gasp, and her chest rises, falls, alive.

There isn’t a choice to be made. He pulls QuikClot combat gauze from the tac vest, pressing it to the wound, into the tract far enough to stem the bleeding for survival. Another wad of QuikClot over the exit on her back, sealing both with clear occlusive dressings. There’s not time for more. He has to move. He withdraws a syrette from another pocket, injects a dose of morphine and watches as her shaking eases.

The engineer is dead, and his little spider is as safe as he can make her. He collects proof of kill and begins the trek to his extract point. He’s nearly there when it occurs to him that restocking the gear from his tac vest is going to demand explanation.

It’s a simple thing, to take the blade he carries and slip it into his side. Just an inch, just enough to leave a small wound that will match up with his healing times if he were to have been injured on the actual mission and not during the departure. He thinks to grab a gauze pack and occlusive dressing, slapping it over the little puncture. It stings, but it will be gone in a few hours.

Nausea threatens again, but he swallows it down. The extract team will be waiting for him, and he must be nothing more than their Winter Soldier. He fills his lungs with hot, dry air and breathes out the memories of a woman he cannot allow anyone to remember he knows. Older memories, deeper ones, swirl further down, of blonde hair and thin limbs, and he closes the vault in the back of his mind, tightening the lockdown he keeps those fragments of self stored under.

He approaches extract, leaps into the waiting aircraft. His handler awaits.

“Soldier. Mission report.”

“Mission complete. Nothing further to report.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on Tumblr @Mohini-Musing


End file.
